In the film Men in Black the eponymous characters press a button and erase your memory. Reading the obituaries about the death of Playboy founder and multi-millionaire Hugh Hefner certainly felt like such a button had been pressed

Mansfield was one of the few places the Tories gained from Labour in the general election. The new MP, Ben Bradley, had an article in the local paper recently about Chatsworth ward. The campaign sent in a reply

Further rail strikes took place against driver-only operation across the country on 3 October. RMT members once again walked out on Southern, Merseyrail and Arriva Rail North plus on Greater Anglia for the first time

Unison unelected officials, not even employed by Barts Health Trust or Serco, have put out a leaflet that attacks Unite the Union and the Socialist Party following the deal that concluded the recent Barts dispute

How appropriate that Theresa May's speech insisting our interests were best served by free market capitalism - "the greatest agent of collective human progress ever created" - came in the same week as budget airline Ryanair cancelled over 700,000 passenger flights

Within one week, Labour controlled Salford city council announced an increase in wages for some of the lowest paid care workers and also made a decision to cut the pay and some jobs of those working in Regulatory Services

A standing ovation greeted Jeremy Corbin's pledges on housing at Labour's conference: to stop 'social cleansing' regeneration schemes and give residents a vote on regeneration proposals; to build more council homes and to control rents.

In the early hours of Sunday 1 October a fire broke out on the ground floor of a three storey block of flats in Ringland Close, Hanley. A mother and two daughters were rescued from their flat above and rushed to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation

Since the early part of the year, members of Carlisle Socialist Party and the Cumbria branch of Unite Community union have been active in the campaign to 'Save our NHS', organising support firstly for the national demonstration in London on 4 March, and subsequently for the two rallies in Carlisle on 8 April and 4 June.

Joseph Mambuliya, London underground cleaner, Socialist Party member and chair of the RMT London Underground cleaners grade committee, explains why the cleaners are demonstrating today, writes The demands are:.

The Tories were humiliated at their conference, hold power only precariously, are split over Europe and on May's leadership. Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn furthers his position and policies in Labour. Peter Taaffe looks at the significance of their contrasting fortunes.

A Unite national meeting for delegates representing workers in local government unanimously voted for a motion proposed by Socialist Party member Danny Hoggan from Greenwich calling on the union to ballot all members in local government on taking industrial action to achieve a 5% pay claim

'Southampton Fair Funding for All Schools' brought teachers, students, TAs, heads and parents onto the streets on 14 October to protest against the growing crisis in Southampton schools. The action took place ahead of the national lobby of MPs at Westminster on 24 October, which the campaign has built for.

At any given time nearly a billion people on the planet are hungry, and a third are malnourished. And yet a new report says the growing obesity crisis is set to cost $1.2 trillion a year worldwide from 2025.

Arms manufacturer BAE Systems has announced that up to 2,000 jobs will be cut in locations across the UK. These job cuts will have a devastating effect on the lives of workers losing their livelihood but will also have a wider impact on the local economy.

Porters and domestics - members of the GMB union - at the North Middlesex hospital, facing the threat of redundancies and pay cuts, organised a spirited protest with a barbecue outside the hospital on 12 October.

The October revolution showed countless millions that workers have the power to stop exploitation and oppression. It's no surprise these events inspired marvellous documentary and artistic works. The Socialist revisits some of the classic accounts of 1917 - and comments on some more recent efforts to smear it...

We are calling on all members and supporters of the Socialist Party to donate to the Socialism 2017 appeal. We have set an ambitious target to raise £30,000 at the Saturday night rally on 11 November because that is what we need to ensure that we can go into 2018 with our finances strengthened.

An NHS 'uprising' took place in Grantham, Lincolnshire, on Saturday 14 October! A determined 800-strong demonstration wound its way through the town. People are fighting against the night time closure of Grantham A&E and the systematic downgrading of services in their local hospital.

Haverfordwest is a small market town in south west Wales and in the marginal Preseli Pembrokeshire constituency of Tory MP and former secretary of state for Wales Stephen Crabb. On 14 October, the town centre was packed with around 300 people attending an anti-austerity rally

Protesters gathered outside China's embassies and consulates, as well as the Hong Kong government's economic and trade offices, in 22 cities across 20 countries on 12-13 October. The protests were part of a newly launched international campaign, 'Global Solidarity - Stop Repression in Hong Kong'.

Theatre: We're Still Here: Under the threat of closure, the steel workers - but not the pensioners - were forced to vote for one of two options, either of which meant a cut in pensions. 'We're Still Here' dramatises the effect of this threat on the workers.

Skipton is a quiet market town better known as the 'Gateway to the Yorkshire Dales' than it is for revolution. But on 6 October, socialist artists and activists, as well as the general public, from Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire gathered to view a dazzling selection of work by artists loosely grouped around the 'Bad Art' project.

Across 16 separate picket lines with over 100 strikers and supporters attending a rally, University and College Union members gave their response to management's provocative attempts to amend Leeds University's charter to remove protections from dismissal.

There have been few times in history when socialist ideas have held such immediate relevance and international potential - Socialism 2017 will see key figures from these struggles gathered under one roof

Film - The Death of Stalin: Fans of The Thick of It's lampooning of New Labour will notice parallels. The Stalinists, like the Blairites, are egotistical buffoons, completely isolated from the working class